Archive for
June 15th, 2009

I think it behooves writers to make technical documentation fun by embedding a few surprises here and there for the unsuspecting reader. Just like how chip designers used to embed artwork in their chips (I’ve done so myself), writers of technical documents should try to slip in a bit of flowery language from time to time.

For example, let’s look at the following sentence:

Original: Jitter degradation is most sensitive to supply noise between 20 MHz to 80 MHz.

[…]

Simile: The 20-80 MHz supply noise’s effect on the clock edges’ accuracy is like a well-endowed woman doing jumping jacks.

It’s a battle between surface tension and pressure. But all in all it bubbles operate on a fundamental principle: laziness. Bubbles form which ever shape minimizes their surface area. This is usually a sphere until force them to have a little fun.

The “I blog about science” badge. Obviously
The “science deprives me of my bed” badge (LEVEL II) Two week at Cornell’s Nanofabrication Lab (NNF)
The “broken heart for science” badge I just had to go to grad school …
The “non-explainer” badge (LEVEL I) My mom still introduces me as a nuclear physicist
The “what I do for science dictates my having to wash my hands before I use the toilet” badge. On occasion …
The “works with acids” badge. HF scares me, but I used it at the NNF
The “I’ve set fire to stuff” badge (LEVEL III) ’nuff said
The “experienced with electrical shock” badge (LEVEL III) I remember “locating” the 400V leads to the piezo stack on the confocal cavity while adjusting some optics
The “I’ve done science with no conceivable practical application” badge. TRIUMF
The “I work with way too much radioactivity, and yet still no discernable superpowers yet” badge. TRIUMF again, and time in 5 nuclear power plants while in the navy
The “has frozen stuff just to see what happens” badge (LEVEL III) Ah, the joys of Liquid nitrogen
The “destroyer of quackery” badge. Got my start at talk.origins on USENET
The “inappropriate nocturnal use of lab equipment in the name of alternative science experimentation / communication” badge. If you’ve got it, use it!

Soot particles grow inside a flame when tiny, carbon-rich spheres stick together to form larger, tenuous aggregates. As they grow, the particles take on a characteristic branched shape because two colliding clusters are most likely to attach at their protruding “fingers.”

These bushy shapes are conveniently described as fractals–geometric objects whose mass grows as a fractional power of their linear size, rather than the third power that characterizes ordinary solids like spheres and cubes. Theory predicts that virtually all clusters should have a fractal dimension very close to 1.8, and past experiments agree. But a collaboration led by Hans Moosmüller of the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nevada, found many clusters with a much lower dimension, characteristic of a more rod-like shape.